Hey, I think I see a pattern forming here. Aww, and just maybe they met under the romantic aura of that abortion rally?

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First, mucho apologies for my blog silence the past week. Things are quite hectic at work and my travel schedule around the USA has been completely crazy (and filled with apathetic/mean US Airways employees).

My Diarist, “Shock Troops,” and the two other pieces I wrote for the New Republic have stirred more controversy than I could ever have anticipated. They were written under a pseudonym, because I wanted to write honestly about my experiences, without fear of reprisal. Unfortunately, my pseudonym has caused confusion. And there seems to be one major way in which I can clarify the debate over my pieces: I’m willing to stand by the entirety of my articles for the New Republic using my real name. I am Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a member of Alpha Company, 1/18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division.

My pieces were always intended to provide my discreet view of the war; they were never intended as a reflection of the entire U.S. Military. I wanted Americans to have one soldier’s view of events in Iraq.

It’s been maddening, to say the least, to see the plausibility of events that I witnessed questioned by people who have never served in Iraq. I was initially reluctant to take the time out of my already insane schedule fighting an actual war in order to play some role in an ideological battle that I never wanted to join. That being said, my character, my experiences, and those of my comrades in arms have been called into question, and I believe that it is important to stand by my writing under my real name.

–Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp

Now, I certainly don’t deny that individuals go off the reservation and do nutty and abhorrent things both in war (Abu Grahib) or under pressure of crisis (Ray Nagin). Especially in a war where one whole political party back home in the USA has a policy of denial, failure and retreat.

But let’s state the facts here as we know them this morning: The New Republic has still not corroborated anything Private Beauchamp wrote. And just because Scott Thomas has a real name, doesn’t mean what he wrote is real or true. After all, any Army Private with a knack for writing and an active imagination can write a piece of war fiction.

The New Republic says a formal military investigation has been launched at the base where Private Thomas/Beauchamp claims he was stationed when these alleged atrocities occurred. Good! If there are facts to back up “Scott Thomas’” tale of war gone bad, then people — including Beauchamp, apparently – need to be prosecuted and court martialed.

But I’m highly skeptical when we live in an era of Liberal Lies Extraordinarily Manufactured On the News (LEMONs): John “Genghis Khan” Kerry, Dan Rather, Joe Wilson, 2004 Lancet Study, Jack “Cold Blooded Haditha” Murtha… the list is becoming endless.

And luckily, this is what the blogosphere is all about… to find the real truth.

As many have already figured out long ago using that gray mass between our ears, that much-touted 2004 Lancet study — claiming 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths following the US invasion — has once again been discredited.

In science, replication is the iron test. I find it revealing that no other source or study has come close to replicating the original study. All my original points still stand.

And now, most damning, is a study about to be formally presented on Monday by David Kane, Institute Fellow at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. Michelle Malkin has the exclusive preview.

Much of the math here is mind-numbingly complicated, but Kane’s bottom line is simple: the Lancet authors “cannot reject the null hypothesis that mortality in Iraq is unchanged.”Translation: according to Kane, the confidence interval for the Lancet authors’ main finding is wrong. Had the authors calculated the confidence interval correctly, Kane asserts that they would have failed to identify a statistically significant increase in risk of death in Iraq, let alone the widely-reported 98,000 excess civilian deaths.

An interesting side note: as Kane observes in his paper, the Lancet authors “refuse to provide anyone with the underlying data (or even a precise description of the actual methodology).” The researchers did release some high-level summary data in highly aggregated form (see here), but they released neither the detailed interviewee-level data nor the programming code that would be necessary to replicate their results.

Please make sure to tune into CBS Evening News tonight when Katie Couric will not be doing a follow-up story to set the record straight….

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

UPDATE (from GPW): Busy with schoolwork today so I may not get to blog, but just wanted to note that David Kane who wrote the piece debunking the Lancet study is like yours truly, a graduate of America’s finest liberal arts college and blogs about our alma mater at Ephblog. Check it out!